brand condoms at Duane Reade with a twinkle in my eye like Gene Kelly’s while he splashed in the puddles outside Debbie Reynolds’s house.
Soon, Colin and I were telling each other what we wanted in bed, and although he was uncomfortable at first with the kind of conversation that didn’t involve enlightening me about how the Australians are superior to Americans because they ban billboards in certain areas of their countryside, he slowly began to talk to me, more and more, about what he wanted to do with the baseball bat he kept in his pants.
“You know what else I imagine?” he said one night, confusing “imagine” with “request.”
“I would really like it if you took my cum in your mouth when you were done going down on me, and then you let me kiss you with my tongue so I could taste my own cum.”
Anybody unfortunate enough to have sat through Kevin Smith’s Clerks (the best of what is a largely reprehensible oeuvre) will know that the sexual act Colin described is known as “snowballing.” And while requesting that favor was a bit surprising, it was not something outright uncalled-for, like asking me to shit on his father’s face, a variation I believe was addressed in Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back . And because I was having pussy-stretching sex with a guy I was really attracted to, I did it.
It’s really a tribute to the female bonding hormones that are released when you’re getting good-laid that you’re pretty much up for anything exclusive of fisting your sister. I wondered what was in Colin’s semen, considering his diet. Was our affair just a nefarious scheme to get me to eat tempeh?
Anyway, that happened, and he was really turned on, and then, the next time, he told me he was going to come on me and lick it off, and then he did, and soon enough, he was just eating his own semen and I was there as a witness.
I felt like I did on the phone—unnecessary. I mean, what’s the point of having a girl in the room if all you want to do is dine on your own jizz? Why not cut out the middleman?
Colin was probably just starving for animal protein, poor guy. No wonder he was obsessed. It’s like how all dieters do is think about cupcakes, or how all Catholics do all day is imagine how much fun it would be to get an abortion.
COLIN SOON returned to whence he came—to his recording studio and his band and his ideas and his touring schedule. He called me a couple of times after that weekend, but our conversations went back to the way they were before. I was superfluous—an appendage, and not as formidable as the one between his gawky legs. He told me how much he wanted to drop acid with me in the desert, and how much he hated New York City; two things that pretty much make me as dry as a “ Shouts & Murmurs” column. Soon enough, we went our separate ways. Me with the knowledge that our differences were insurmountable, and him knowing, wherever he is—probably Portland—that somebody once witnessed him feasting on the kind of intimate delicacy that is not technically permissible on a vegan diet.
turn down the glamour
D uring my last year at college, I decided to open my horizons, which is a fancy word for “legs.” I figured that if I was less picky about the guys I hooked up with—as though that was ever my problem—I’d increase my odds of finding somebody good. It is not an absurd philosophy by any means, as long as you’re not too emotional about it.
I tried dating boys from school for once: a pockmarked, handsome weirdo with Clark Kent glasses from my photography seminar; a schlubby, Jewish tall guy who lived in the dorm room next to mine who blathered on about De La Soul before asking me if he could use my bathroom, then taking an extraordinary crap in the toilet that was, ostensibly, right next door to his own. And then there was Jazz Matt, Nate’s nickname for the skinny Daniel Stern lookalike from my screenwriting class who interned at Small’s Jazz Club
Abbi Glines
Georgina Brown
Larry McMurtry
Charlie Richards
Kay Gordon
Christine Barber
Sam Cabot
Jonathan Moeller
John Sladek
John Sladek